Needing to work and wanting to work are two very different things. Data and financial planning determine the former, the latter is a personal preference. Remember, retirement is an option, not a requirement. Many who love what they do never plan to retire and some can’t wait for the day. Those who plan to retire work a plan to determine what they need to save and how long they need to work. Anything beyond that is gravy.
I’ve posted on the retirement thread that, similar to @1214mom, I started tracking every penny in and every penny out monthly about 25 years ago and shared the buckets and spreadsheet that organically grew and and changed to reflect our changing lives over those child-raising and pre-retirement years. I have known for decades exactly what we spend monthly and annually and where, so there was very little guessing in retirement planning. We just had to answer the question: Do we want to live below, at, or above our current spending rate? We’ve worked with a financial planner going on 20 years now who we’ve continued to share this data and our risk tolerance with, and she has guided us to where we comfortably needed to be before we stepped off in 2017*. There have been no surprises.
My point in droning on about this again is that until you have a very firm handle on your current spending (not just tracking your bank balance) and know what you want your retirement lifestyle to look like (compared to your current lifestyle), you will be doing a lot of guessing and that guessing is what causes anxiety. If you still have a few years before you plan to retire and you don’t a very granular view of where your money goes, now is the time to start tracking. Knowledge is power, and that data will help you answer the question “how much is enough?” and determine whether additional years of work are necessary or not.
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*DH is one who left the corporate grind but continues consulting to one client because he wants to, not because he has to. That money is his alone to spend on hookers and beer and goes into a separate account that is his alone. He still considers himself retired because he has complete control over his time, effort, and enjoyment.